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Religious laws and violence

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Mass crimes against humanity & genocide

The URLs RELIGIOUSGENOCIDE.COM & RELIGIOUSGENOCIDE.ORG link
directly to this menu. It is part of the 7,200 essay RELIGIOUSTOLERANCE.ORG website

Quotations:

"The death of one man is a tragedy; The death of a
million is a statistic." This is commonly attributed to Joseph Stalin,
although there is no real evidence that he ever said it.

"Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you
are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god." Jean
Rostand.

"People don't simply wake up one day and commit genocide. They
start by setting themselves apart from others, diminishing the stature of
those adhering to dissenting beliefs in small, insidious steps. They begin
by saying, 'We're the righteous, and we'll tolerate those others.' And as
the toleration diminishes over time, the inevitable harms are overlooked.
It is for that reason that James Madison wisely wrote that 'it is proper
to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties'." Michael
Newdow 1

Overview:

A individual's greatest enemy appears to be their own national government. One
source estimates that "Nearly 170 million people probably have been
murdered by governments in this [20th] century; over four-times those killed in combat
in all international and domestic wars during the same years." 3

Mass murder and genocide in recent years have involved:

The execution of individuals who have simply decided to change their
religion,

Mass murder of followers of a minority religion by members of a
dominant religion,

Mass murder of followers of one faith group by others of the same
religion.

Mass murder and genocide of an identifiable group for a variety of
reasons.

It appears that Christians are more often martyred in recent years because of their faith than followers of any other religion. On the order of 105,000 Christians a year are murdered for the simple reason that they are Christian. Murders peaked at about 160,000 during the year 2000 and were expected to reach 100,000 in 2011. This is about one Christian murdered every five minutes. A major effect of these killings is the decimation of Christian communities in the Middle East as they attempt to emigrate to other countries where they can life free of threats to their lives.

One of the main motivations for the creation of the United Nations in 1945
was to prevent future mass crimes against humanity and genocides. In this role,
the UN has not done well. As of early 2012,
governments continue committing or allowing mass crimes against humanity
including the victimization of:

References:

Michael Newdow, "Judge Roy Moore Deserves Jail. How is this
in any way different from David Koresh's refusal to abide by the commands of the
federal agents in Waco?," Beliefnet.com, 2003-AUG, at:
http://www.beliefnet.com/